Hyderabad: Carnatic vocalist and winner of Ramon Magsaysay award, Thodur Madabusi Krishna delivered a guest lecture at IIIT-Hyderabad on Privacy and the Public Gaze – a Singer’s Reflection today.

He discussed the issue of privacy and the dilemma between silence and expression from the point of view of an artist. T M Krishna explored the need for privacy and the freedom to feel and think without fear as living in constant public’s gaze leads to conformism and stifles creativity.

Krishna also spoke about the all-encompassing nature of the arts and how it cuts across all strata of society, not being merely the prerogative of the elite class. He shared some anecdotes of his experiences of his training under the tutelage of Padma Bhushan-awardee Semmangudi SrinivasaIyer.

Speaking on T M Krishna’s visit to IIIT-Hyderabad, Prof Harjinder Singh from Center for Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics (CCNSB) said, “With its commitment for building a competent and visionary research manpower that is also caring towards needs of society, IIIT-Hyderabad has been organizing talks by individuals who have distinguished themselves by pursuing excellence in their area of interest. These talks are open to the wider public.

In the last one year, we have had talks delivered by personalities from a diverse canvas made of areas including theatre, political theory, social activism, gender, caste and tribal issues, mathematics, etc. The list of speakers include Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry, Nandini Sundar, Nivedita Menon, Mohan Mj, Anand Teltumbde in one series of talks and Kalpana Kannabiran and Ram Puniyani in another. Continuing this effort, we are happy that Mr T M Krishna visited our campus and shared his views”.